Running Japan Isn't Any Easier Than Running U.s.

October 5, 1985|By James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate

TOKYO — Some months ago, Japan's Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone visited the White House. He and President Reagan got along so famously that they wound up by addressing each other as Yaz and Ron. After three days in Japan I can explain their affection: They share the same problems.

Take the defense budget. Our own peerless leader, as everyone knows, has been having a terrible time persuading Congress to increase spending on the military. Nakasone is about to have a worse time. On Sept. 18 he announced that he would ask the Diet to appropriate 18.4 trillion yen over the next five years for Japan's self-defense forces. The announcement set off a barrage from every side.

Back in 1976 Japan's Cabinet had established a guideline by which defense spending would not exceed 1 percent of the nation's gross national product. In the current fiscal year, defense outlays are estimated at 0.997 percent. Nakasone's budget would amount to 1.038 percent. You wouldn't think an insignificant difference of 41 one-thousandths of a percentage point would touch off a political explosion, but the outcry was horrendous.

Reagan is a lame duck. So is Nakasone. His term as prime minister expires in November of next year, and he has the equivalent of George Bush, Jack Kemp and Bob Dole who want his job. Nakasone's Liberal Democratic Party controls the Diet in about the same way that Reagan's Republicans control the U.S. Senate. Everybody's got a Lowell Weicker.

Back home in Washington, the talk is of a trade policy. That's the talk here in Tokyo too. Reagan and Nakasone both are fending off protectionism, and the two gentlemen have their hands full. It is said that Nakasone personally would be agreeable to expediting a schedule of tariff reductions on American beef, citrus fruits and wood products, but he can't overcome opposition from the country boys in his Diet. Reagan has the same problem with the footwear and textile lobbies.

Remember Bitburg? Reagan got himself into a political pickle by visiting a military cemetery in West Germany where a few Nazi storm troopers were buried. A few weeks ago, on the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II, Nakasone provoked a remarkably similar rhubarb. He paid a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of Japan's war dead are thought to assemble. Such a visit might seem no more offensive than an American president's laying a wreath at Arlington Cemetery, but such is the innate fear of Japanese militarism that the incident touched off a rolling thunder of protest.

We have recurring problems at home with the solvency of our Social Security system. Japan has a half-dozen pension systems -- one for farmers, one for railroad workers and so on -- and they cause headaches here. Japan's program of national health care is running into the same difficulty that's overtaking Medicare: too many benefits, not enough money.

Nakasone would like to sell off Japan's national railways, at least in part, and turn them over to private ownership. Reagan is trying to sell Conrail and get rid of Amtrak. Both gentlemen are having to satisfy the railway unions, and the unions don't satisfy easily.

The two leaders have at least one more thing in common: Both of them are more popular than their policies. A recent poll found an approval rating of 58 percent for Nakasone, a figure that Ambassador Mike Mansfield describes as ''extraordinary.'' Even so, Nakasone has to struggle to push his programs to enactment. His good buddy, Ronnie Reagan-san, knows exactly how it feels.